apparently there was a machine they sold in the 70’s that allowed one to cut into wood to create layers. Craft machines for hobbyists were popular in those days: rock tumblers, plasticizing half-dome machines and etc.

I’ve never seen the wood carving one, but this guy in the neighborhood of McGee’s in Oakland made a pretty good rendering of the bar from across the street, saw it last week, my first time in this Oakland neighborhood spot.

ALL YEAR LONG I HAVE HUGE … OK NOT HUGE, BUT ALL KINDS OF LITTLE DIFFERENCES WITH THIS GUY AND YOU KNOW WHAT HE DOES?

He invites me on the radio to talk about it.

and last Saturday he let me wear the Championship Ring from 2010. wow.

Marty Lurie, radio host who joined KNBR after working to cover the A’s, was immediately a lucky element for the Giants.

He and I stood exactly where we are in this photo two years before, and bore witness during the run that finally made the Giants World Series Champs in San Francisco. Marty walked in and we won.

For decades a criminal defense attorney, and at that a New Yorker, Mr. Lurie became a historian of the game of baseball independent of what he does now for KNBR. If anyone must, Marty Lurie must be associated with the cross-country relationship the Giants have that reaches back to the Polo Grounds in New York City.

But yes, by providence and timing, Marty has grown into a unique role and is now an important member of the San Francisco Giants team.

Mr. Lurie’s an excellent radio interviewer whose competence is a direct result of his research. I loved watching him at the Public House in Game 5 against the Braves back in 2010. He sat down to score the game and pulled out a yellow legal pad to do it. He’s a baseball nerd trained as a lawyer!

Mr. Lurie’s interviews of baseball players and managers, which he’s been conducting season-long for three years now, are a growing chronicle of the game.

Lurie brought a whole lot of AL contacts over to KNBR the first year and was eager to share with us NLers the value of certain stories. But slowly over the past three years, he has joined the stewards of the Giants Championships of 2010 and 2012 who collectively are arbiters of our first time championship memories.

So Mr. Lurie is an attorney who can discuss both leagues’ histories very effectively.

Marty, I’m saying it here for the first time: You’re the only lawyer I really like.

Thanks for letting me wear the Championship Ring and for doing such a bang-up job behind the mic.

sincerely,

“M.T.” and, in 2010, “Carter from Oakland”

(just pissed off a whole lot of lawyers I know who think me and them’re “real close”).

The last voyage of the Space Shuttle Endeavor to the San Francisco Bay Area, brought a whole lot of people out to see it pass overhead. Just as we were setting up to record at the Marin Headlands, the craft suddenly flew into view over my shoulder!

This is in 1080HD so make sure and set it to that on the player. Thanks to J. Oppenheim for driving and camerawork.

We were on our way to the SF Giants game last week and saw these immense pilings going deep underwater and into the soil for impending building. This is the very beginning of the huge new public space planned for these unused piers – project approved last year by the Interim Mayor and Board.

Incredible to see the specificity with which these long pipes were being placed – two men on a raft floating near the top of the deeply placed piles, as a surveyor takes readings for their placement and an operator swings the long boom of the crane.

Playing catch at the park we noticed what looked like fungus on a tree. Upon closer inspection it was a beehive – but unlike any I’ve seen before.

backwards edit, so it’s photo stills for 47 seconds and then the best video starts at 0:48 in the clip below. You can see the bees entering the trunk of the tree. They’d built this multi-tiered structure on its bark:

This past November, we were extremely lucky to be at Pigeon Point Lighthouse Hostel on the exact day they took the lens down from the top of the lighthouse for the first time since it was installed in 1872, a hundred and forty years ago.

The Pigeon Point lens is a traditional Fresnel lens, designed in 1823 by French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel for use in lighthouses, and characterized by many thin layers of glass which form a prism, allowing the lens to capture more oblique light from a light source and make lighthouses more visible over much greater distances.

It consists of 1008 separate lenses and prisms, and weighs over 8000 pounds.

You can see the lens stored at ground level in the Fog Signal House at the hostel as they complete repairs on the lighthouse. Read history of the lighthouse here.